Ben Jones On Using Child-like Thinking for Success

What I love about my industry is that many, many people think they are very clever – and in the main they are. Their ideas and innovations quite often astound on a global stage. At AKQA, I’m constantly inspired by the people around me; the flow of insights and incredible thinking stimulates unconnected new paths and places found within the mind.  

But to create truly remarkable things, to cut through the mediocrity, it's not just about clever people. So how do you ensure that your products, services (or simply a campaign) redefine, connect and resonate with such magnitude that the shareholders smile even when it’s raining outside?

Here are a few of the things we need to do. 

Hire people far more intelligent than yourself

So yes, clever people are important. But the key here is to hire the right leaders and managers – those who are desperate to hunt out and hire people who are simply better than themselves. Without fear of losing their job. Leaders and managers who have the self-confidence to create a team of client-, ideas- and quality-obsessed people will always make your product better. They will only ever push things to the limit. 

There's no such thing as a fuc*king cuddle factory

I love this phrase. A good friend once said it, and I have taken it as verbatim. You need to create a culture where people are free to say what they really think. There’s nothing worse than hiring clever people who are worried to say what they really think.

The most successful meetings have a tendency to flare up with a healthy tension and possibly into a full-blown argument. Not because it’s personal, but purely because these are clever and passionate people who believe in the right thing.

It’s not about fighting so much as ‘creating through friction'. The outcome is professional respect and the right solution – because two, three or four minds have listened, fought and created. First apart, and then together. 

Just listen to a child. They will say whatever they see because they don’t have social conditioning. 

Champions not consumers

Think about the end user as a potential ‘brand champion’ rather than a consumer. We can’t push products anymore, you have to add value for our audience. At every touch-point your product or service or campaign should never be compromised. It should be so good – combining function and beauty – that in the end, the user champions and broadcasts for you. Don’t think of social strategy: think audience-driven social advocacy. 

Create like a child

The best ideas come not from an adult but from a child. Or at least, an adult with a child-like mind. You see, a child is naive, but a child-like mind allows our imaginations to thrive, to explore without inhibition. 

Yet to be naive is socially unacceptable as an adult. It’s beaten out of us at school or college and – God forbid – you should say something ‘childish’ in a ‘corporation’ as an adult. But when you do, it often sparks a great idea or takes you into a completely new and interesting direction. 

Leaders who encourage naivety and freedom create inspiration from any angle and as a result create great things.

Laughter is the best medicine

The best inventors the world has seen, and the inventions that followed, have quite often come from a silly remark, a crazy idea. Andre Geim, inventor of grapheme, is the only ever winner of both a Nobel Prize and a Nobel IG Prize. He’s famous for leading sessions in which the focus is to have ideas and a thesis so stupid and funny that they make the other people in the room laugh. It’s from the laughter that you can often discover new ideas and angles. 

Be like children in a playground 

So, it’s always good to have clever people. But it’s about going back to our childhoods with this intelligence. Imagine what we could have created! It’s about the difference between the good and the remarkable. Have fun and explore.

Like a child playing with LEGO – they rarely have an idea or a finished product in their head when they first start to put block upon block. They just play, build, imagine and create.